


They r in Abkhazian now, lol

by lukarian



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: 13 prison fic, 13's judoon therapist, 13th doctor in prison, :gun: be proud of me, Gen, Not Beta Read, Post-Season/Series 12, ha. jokes, im making that a tag becuase i think that Kana should become Kan-on, lads... i did it... i wrote a whole fic, this isn't for clem but it's also not NOT for clem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:54:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27409936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lukarian/pseuds/lukarian
Summary: “Sentence” The robotic voice modulator of the Judoon read out “- Whole of life imprisonment”“What?”The past few months have been tough on the doctor, so it's nice that she gets a break. less nice that the break is in a high security prison, but beggars can't be choosers.
Relationships: 13th doctor & Drax, the doctor & drax
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	They r in Abkhazian now, lol

**Author's Note:**

> AHHHHHH ok um. please. If you see grammar mistakes, or inconsistent pronouns. Tell me. Also this is a big moment for me... my first work. there may be a sequel to this depending on how hard school is.

“Sentence” The robotic voice modulator of the Judoon read out “- Whole of life imprisonment”  
“What?”

Stars. If she can figure out from the stars where she is then.. well, the doctor hasn't really thought that far ahead, but for some reason trying to find a familiar constellation was all that mattered to her right now. The Doctor screwed her eyes shut and opened them again, hopping that her vision would vocus. 

It was hard to estimate distance when all the stars were appearing as blurry blobs of light. She tried to focus, find just a bundle of stars that meant something to her, but panic was stopping her from thinking, she doubted that even if her vision was perfect she would have been able to remember any constellations, or where they would put her in the universe. Still, she didn’t pull her eyes away from the small window, not even looking though it anymore but spacing out trying desperately to remember what Kasterboros looked like from three dimensions. It couldn’t be far, there was no way that the Judoon had teleports that powerful. 17 stars. 15 star systems. 

She gave up, turning around and sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her head resting on her knees. 

“Right.” she mumbled to herself. The Doctor had found years ago that she focused best when they were narrating out loud to themselves, or often their companions. 

“Right.” She said again louder, sitting up straighter with her legs crossed, “Judoon prison. What do I know? It’s a ship, yeah?” It felt like a ship, though the cell walls were designed for no vibrations to pass through them it didn’t feel like she was on a planet. There was definitely some sort of power source. A moving space station, the Doctor thought, the perfect prison, never in the same spot, constantly drifting through the voids between stars and avoiding detection from anyone who would want to come and break someone out. 

“Why am I even in prison?” The Doctor asked the empty cell. “Well, I’m sure that I did something to deserve this, even if it was a me that I don’t remember being. The Ruth-Doctor. Doctorruth. But Judoon are generally the shoot-on-site type, if they brought me here then someone must have ordered for me to be brought in alive. That or they didn’t want me regenerating. That is, if they know what I am. Or what I thought I was.” The Doctor sighed. “This would be so much easier if I knew what I was arrested for.”

The Doctor stood up and walked around the cell, properly inspecting it. There was probably a camera around here somewhere, and likely a microphone. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her sonic and was just about to scan the room for technology when she realised how weird that was. 

“They just let me keep my sonic. And my clothes and everything. I’ve even got my phones.” She eyed the door, and then strolled over in two steps pointing the sonic as where the lock-mechanism would be. 

The door made a promising “click” noise when the doctor scanned it, almost bringing a smile to her face, the moment of hope was short lived though, as less then a second later the sonic sent the specs for the door to her hindbrain. 

Deadlock sealed.

Of course it was deadlock sealed. 

She scans the rest of the cell and finds a camera but no recording device. Unfortunate. No one was listening and could answer the many questions that she had to ask. 

Bored with nothing else to do, the Doctor sat down in the center of the cell. The room was cool, probably pre-set to a temperature meant for a Gallifreyan, though after years of keeping her TARDIS temperature around 20° for the sake of her human companion the Doctor was used to a slightly warmer environment. 

Could she even call herself Gallifreyan anymore? The Doctor had never really liked the planet that she grew up on until she was forced to leave it, but it was still part of her identity. 

What the master had revealed to her in the Matrix in the ruins of the planet was such a small part of the story. If what he told her was true, and she predated every Timelord, even Lord Rassilon, who had claimed to be the father of all Timelords, she must have had thousands of lifetimes. Though the Doctor knew more than she ever did about her history, she felt like it was the opposite, like someone had siven her just the first and last chapters of a book with no hints about what happened in the middle. 

The Doctor felt sick to the stomach. It felt like she had been teleported again, out of an empty room with calming light into a mosh pit at a concert where no one could speak any of the same languages as her. She needed everything to stop for a moment. Stop moving and stop making her dizzy. 

She considered going into a trance, but that would do nothing to stop all the thoughts screaming over each other in her head. Even if she could shut up her thoughts, the same part of her brain that stopped her from sleeping anywhere other than the TARDIS vetoed the very idea. 

She was in a new place, completely at the mercy of the Judoon prison guards for a crime, it would be too risky to go into a trance and give them the opportunity to swipe her sonic and phones and various other helpful nicknacks stored in her coat pockets. 

She tried breathing instead. Deep breathing. Breathing was good. Great. People loved breathing, did it all the time. The Doctor took a big breath in and felt the oxygen move through her body all the way to her fingertips and toes then back out again. 

Another ten deep breaths and the uneasiness in her stomach died down, and another 40 and her head stopped racing. 

She’d be alright. She had been through worse. She was the Doctor, and she never gave up on people, and maybe just this once she could include herself in that. 

The Doctor had always had a very good sense of time, which was how she knew that her food was delivered to her via teleporter every 6 hours and 32 minutes. There are no utensils on the tray that is given to her, and the first five times the food is delivered the Doctor chooses not to eat it, leaving the plate in the same spot it arrived to be teleported back out 8 minutes before the next meal comes in.   
First she let herself go hungry, and then snacked on the energy bars that she kept in her jacket pockets to give to Graham when he started to complain while the Doctor was trying to show him the wonders of the universe. 

Graham probably thinks that she’s dead. 

She’s as good as, from where he stands, she doubts that she’ll ever see him or Ryan or Yaz again.   
Around 7 hours after her arrival in the cell (once she had calmed down from her initial panic and inspected every corner of the place, the Doctor sits on the floor in the center of the Cell. There are four objects laid in front of her, each pulled from the insides of her coat, and each representing a possible escape plan. 

The first and second actually just represent one. The TARDIS key and a battery. The Doctor had done it before once, summoned the TARDIS using just these two objects. Sure the circumstances were different then, and she hadn't been able to pull off the same trick twice, but it was worth a shot. She picked them up along with the fourth object - her sonic - and got to work.

The theory was simple. The TARDIS key was part of the TARDI, and the sonic was psychically connected to the TARDIS as well. The TARDIS wanted to be whole, connected to the key again. (The Doctor had a theory once upon a time that that was the reason she kept going back to Earth - the TARDIS was looking for all the keys that the Doctor had given out to her companions over the years) She just needed to get a signal to her TARDIS to let her know where the key was. 

With the battery secured to the key, the Doctor adjusted the settings on the sonic and pressed down on the button. 

Nothing happened. She didn’t think that it would. She pocketed the key and the battery, and picked up the last object on the floor, her cell phone.

Or at least, one of them.

The same phone that she used to text O - the master - the same phone that she used to text the master on. Barely hoping that it would work, based on the assumption that the Judoon would have some sort of technology in place to stop outgoing signals, the Doctor opened her phone.

Standing now, the Doctor scrolled through ehr contacts. Though she rarely visited them after they left the TARDIS, the Doctor liked to keep the phone numbers of all her companions. Well, the ones who left the TARDIS alive, saved in her phone. 

Once she made it down to the last name on the list, “Zoe”, she scrolled back up, slower this time, reading every single name. 

When she got to “O” her finger hovered over his name. She kept going. 

After her fourth read through of her contacts the Doctor turned off her phone, slipping it into her pocket, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

None of her human friends could help her this far out, and she didn’t have any alien friends who were close enough to this time to break her out of prison. Even if they could, what would she tell them? 

How would they find her when she herself couldn’t even locate where she was in the universe?

River maybe. River could probably break her out, just like she broke out of the Stormcage every time she got a bit restless, but River and the Doctor’s story was over, and they could never see one another again. 

Jack. But then she’d have to face what she did.

Two of her options out and so the Doctor was left with her last and possibly stupidest option. The cell had a door, which she already knew was deadlock sealed, but she had been teleported into this room, and anywhere you can teleport into, you can also teleport out of. Hopefully, the mechanism that was used to teleport her here was the same that brought her her food, which she had found on her initial scan of the cell on her first day of captivity had a component stored in the ceiling and floor. 

On the off chance that this plan would actually work - and she would be teleported to presumingly a food preparation room - there was a lot of running ahead of her. The Doctor double checked that everything that she had pulled out of her pockets was safely stored in their spatially transcendental folds. 

Plan might be a weighted word for it. With no way to access the mechanics the ‘plan’ was basically just ‘point your sonic and wish really hard’. 

It would have been nice if that had worked. She had done so much for the universe, it would be nice if just for once it gave her the same kindness.

It’s two days into the Doctor’s residence in the Judoon prison when she finally sees another person. She’s trying to learn how to do a handstand (a skill that she had been meaning to acquire for several centuries but never got around to practicing) against the back wall of her cell when her ninth serving of materialized… spear root? Ribbon root? Even though her food looks and feels like a jello-y block there is something clearly Gallifreyan about the taster, which would have been a nice thought, if not for the fact that Gallifrey was destroyed and she was being held captive, arrives right on schedule, along with a note.

The note is written in holographic writing that floats over her meal, but before the Doctor gets close enough to read it, a recording does it for her, speaking in the same roboticized voice that Jadoon communicated in when they are forced to speak a language other than their mother tongue.   
“Prisoner: The Doctor. arriving in <2.03 hours>.”

“I’m already here!” the Doctor called out to the dissolving text. “You’d think a place as well set up as this would know how long they’re had their prisoners.”

Two hours later a Judoon materialized in the Doctor’s cell. She was wearing different clothing than any other Judoon that the Doctor had seen - clearly not a part of a Judoon Platoon.

“Hello, Doctor. I am your .”  
“Oh. So it’s like that.” said the Doctor, who had given up on her handstands after falling on her head a few too many times and had been sitting in the middle of the room fidgeting with a rubik's cube that she had forgotten she owned (prison gives you a lot of time to finally take stock of your pockets) when the Judoon-Doctor arrived. She quickly stood up and made her way to the opposite side of the room, trying to be as casual as she could. “Well, I’m in quite alright shape, and although I appreciate all the research you lot did, I doubt that any doctor left in this universe is qualified to take care of a being such as myself. Nothing to worry about though, like I said: Tip top shape. Great condition. Nothing wrong with me. Now I have a few questions-”

“I recognise that each person is different, and you especially, but I will not know fro certain that I am not able to help you unless we try,”

“Try what?” The Doctor took a defensive step backwards, her back just brushing the wall, “What are we trying.”

“My name is Kana. I am your .”

“Yeah, I got that much. And I’m the Doctor. I’m not sick and even if I was, your primitive equipment would likely not be able to tell. I’m one of a kind! Isn’t anyone in the whole of the universe for you to compare me too.” 

“Though your biology is different, at the core, all sentient brains function alike. We are all beings of the universe.”

“Hold up.” The Doctor had been walking slow circled around Kana, who had been standing in her spot in the middle of the cell and rotating along with the Doctor so that she was always withing her sight. “What are you saying about my brain?”

“All sentient beings share a common base code?”

“Yeah. A base code that the founder of the Timelords, Rassilon, supposedly wrote. Though I was always taught that he invented regeneration, so I don’t know what’s to believe at this point. 

Then Kana did something that the Doctor had not seen coming. She sat down.

Just a Judoon sitting cross legged in the middle of a prison cell while the prisoner stalks around her, circling like a hawk. 

“Would you like to take a seat, or keep pacing?” Kana asks. She clearly want the Doctor to sit down as well.

“I think I’ll stay standing, if that’s quite alright” Said the Doctor, but she did stop walking, standing some three meters in front of the Judoon, waiting for her to say something else.

After a few minutes it became clear that Kana was waiting for the Doctor to speak, so she did. “Are you not going to take me somewhere? You can hardly perform a check up with no materials.”

“The only material I need at this point is conversation.” Kana answered. 

“Not very technological.”

“Healing rarely is”

“Not sure what you think I need to be healing from. I’m not injured.” 

“You do not need to be injured to require healing.”

“Yes you do!” The Doctor snapped. “Of course you do! I don’t know what he- Kana what does healing mean in Judoonese?”

“The Process of becoming sound again, or a least making progress towards healing or reliving a disorder or unrest.” 

“And you do this through…?”

“There are many ways to go about healing, but generally it involves you, the patient, and me, the doctor, talking about your problems. I will attempt to help you come to terms with, and resolve them.”

“Oh.” Said the Doctor. “You’re… I see. There isn’t a word for that in Gallifreyan, but the English word - that’s one of the Earth languages- is .”

Kana made a noise, which the Doctor assumed was a sound of agreement. With the threat of being experimented on out of the way, the Doctor came a little closer, and sat down across from her. 

“I know that I probably do need a therapist, I’m not so thick that I can’t figure that out, but I don’t think that this is the right time or place for it. You work for this prison, and there are security cameras all around here. I can’t trust that what I say is heard by you and only you, and that nothing we talk about leaves this cell.”

“No.” Kana looked genuinely apologetic. “Anything I tell you you will have to believe on a basis of trusting me, and I know that you do not yet. But I can tell you this whether you choose to believe it or not. There are no microphones here. There was a lawsuit centuries ago that forbade them in cells. 

There are cameras but they are for my, and your, protection, and I doubt that there are any secrets that will be able to be decoded from just our movements. As well, I have brought with me a non-disclosure contract that we will both sign. I know that it is difficult for you to trust the people who work for a place that has imprisoned you, and I personally believe that life long sentences in maximum security cells such as this one are cruel and unjust. Even if you are unwilling to talk to me about your past, I hope that you will still talk to me about your present situation, so that we can make your time here more bearable.”

The Doctor wanted to trust Kana. She knew that she shouldn’t and that her whole speech was pre-prepared and told to each of her patients, but it sounded like the words came from her heart.  
It must take a very special person to be a therapist in a prison, the Doctor thought. If they had met under different circumstances she and Kana would probably have gotten along great. They might have even traveled together, if Kana was the type to do such a thing. 

“Kana?”

“Yes?”

“Do you like to travel?”

“I travel on all my holidays.”

The Doctor smiled. “Where have you been?”

“Mostly within the Shadow-Proclamations territory, though I did once visit a planet called ‘Midnight’”

“Midnight? With the diamond structures?”

“Yes. Have you heard of it?”

“I went there once, years ago. Whole different me, actually. Almost died, but that’s a story for another time.”

“Where else have you traveled to?” Kana asked.

“Oh, just about everywhere. That’s the goal at least. Every star in the universe, that was my dream when I was a kid. It could still happen. Might have already happened, actually.”

Kana, thankfully, didn’t remind her that she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.   
“What is your favorite planet that you have gone to so far?”

“Earth.” The Doctor said it without thinking, and her own answer shocked her a bit. She had been asked the same question a hundred times by a hundred different people, but she had never answered it honestly before. Usually she was with humans, and she would think up the most beautiful place she had been, or the most interesting, or the most otherworldly, but of all other mysterious, glorious, wonderful worlds, the one she kept coming back to was Earth.

“Would you tell me about it? We only have a few minutes left, but I would love to hear.”

Oh where to start, the Doctor thought. “It’s the planet humans originated from. I remember the firs- When I was on Gallifrey as a child, a member of my family was doing research about Earth, and they had brought their notes home. I read through them, and then stole some. From then on I sort of thought of Earth as “my” planet. Like, when someone would say “pick a planet” Earth was the first to come to mind. I did a dozen school projects on Earth throughout school, to the point that my teachers wouldn’t let me choose it as a topic anymore. 

When I finally got to leave Gallifrey and go where I wanted to go, the first stop was Earth. So were the next two, actually. Before, when I was on Gallifrey, my fascination with Earth was just with the culture and history and language. Gallifrey is all the same. It’s twice the size of Earth but on Earth if you travel just a few hundred kilometers in any direction you come across a whole different world. There’s different plants and different animals and different languages and traditions and history. I could tell you everything that there is to know about Gallifrey’s history, or at least, everything that I was taught about it. I’d have to spend my next 10 lives to even make a dent in explaining the story of Earth. That’s what fascinates me about it, I think. It’s the same planet but every time that I visit there’s something new to see.” 

The Doctor sighed and looked over at Kana. The Judoon seemed to be hanging onto her every word, so the Doctor continued. 

“Anyways. Like I said, I came there out of academic curiosity, but I kept going back for another reason. My granddaughter, I-” The Doctor stopped suddenly, thrown out of her rambling before she really started back up. She had realised the same thing after she had ended the time war all those centuries ago, but back then she had just felt remorse for Susan being killed along with the rest of the planet. Now when her name crossed her minds she felt anger. 

Susan was the only thing that she could always count on the Master leaving alone. She was his granddaughter too, and they had loved each other. Had he even considered her when he scorched Gallifrey?

“Doctor?” 

For a moment the Doctor couldn’t tell where the robotic voice was coming from, but then she remembered the Judoon sitting across from her. Looking up the Doctor met Kana’s soft gaze.   
“Are you in the present?” Kana asked. 

“Well, that’s a tricky question for a person like me.”

“Would you like to continue talking about Earth, or would you be alright to talk about your granddaughter?”

“I suppose I could tell you about Susan.” the Doctor said, chewing on her lip as she thought. What would she even say? It had been years since the two had last seen each other, with Susan being offworld during the one brief visit the Doctor made to Gallifrey before it went back up in smoke. 

“Susan, she chose that name herself. It’s a type of flower, which she thought fit well as her Gallifreyan name is also a flower. She came with me when I ran away from Gallifrey, or I guess I ran away with her. She was the only person who never tired of me talking about Earth all the time, and she fell in love with it the moment we landed. She wanted to go undercover, sort of live as the humans live, so she enrolled herself in a human school. That’s where I met the first humans that I traveled with, they were school teachers of hers.”

“Where is Susan now?”

“Dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The one who should be sorry is dead too, but that’s not much consolation to me. He always comes back.”

Kana didn’t know what to say to that, and the Doctor didn’t feel like explaining any further, instead Kana moved them along, telling the Doctor what she should expect from their relationship and asking if she wanted to focus on something specific in their future meetings.

The Doctor waved away most of her questions with vague answers. They decided on hour long meetings every day (the Doctor knew that this would be the only company she got for a while, and that was better than sitting by herself until she came up with a way to break out). A few signed contracts later and the Doctor was once again alone in her cell.

It seemed bigger now, after having Kana there. 

The Doctor strolled over to the Window and looked out at the stars. After a week of studying them she was pretty sure she knew where they were. The farthest star that she could see to her left, if she stood all the way at the right side of her window, was qQuadrapelisys. She had taken Ryan, Yaz, and Graham there once.

When the Doctor had arrived in the prison, finding out where she was had seemed like the most important thing, but now that she knew, the information seemed pointless. 

Over the past week she had taken out her phone several more times. She had tried to call Jack, because she knew that he was alive, and she knew that he would be willing to break into a prison for her, but the signal never made it past the prison’s wards. 

The Doctor kicked herself for being so weak. She had mentioned it to Kana that morning (or what constituted for morning on a space station), taking a break from her previous story about Teagan and Nyssa. 

The Doctor had spent billions of years trapped in her own confession dial. Running and bleeding and   
dying again and again and again, and she had come out of it... well, not alright. She had said that she came out of it alright but Kana had challenged that.

“Did you actually come out alright, or did you just come out not as bad as you could have?”

“Well, anything could be worse.”

“My point exactly, Doctor. Are you telling yourself that you can’t be affected by what happened within your because you have had worse things happen to you in the past?”

The Doctor had pointelly refused to answer Kana’s question, but it was running circles in her brain again as she let her eyes wander over the countless stars. Would this count as worse? It had to count as better, right? The Doctor knew that wasn’t the point of Kana’s words, but she couldn’t help but wonder where being imprisoned fell on her lifetimes scale of tragedies.

The Doctor dug around in her pocket and found a notebook and a pen. Sitting down, she opened the book and lay it down on the ground in front of herself. The Doctor drew a line across the two pages. On one end she wrote “minor tragedies” and on the other she wrote “major tragedies” then hesitated.   
She’d need more planning for this. 

The Doctor flipped to a new page in the notebook, first folding over the corner of the pages with the line so that she wouldn’t lose it. On this page she wrote a title at the top of the page “tragedies in no particular order.” and started listing things.

The Doctor got caught up in her list, and didn’t stop until the message came that Kana would be arriving in 2.03 hours. Kana would not be thrilled with the existence of this list, the Doctor knew that much. They had talked a few days ago about what the doctor can do to keep herself content while she was in prison. “The only company you have here, outside of me, are your thoughts. Make sure that your thoughts are the sort of people you’d like to spend time with.” 

The Doctor hated spending time with her thoughts. 

“I’m a woman.”

“I do not know much about Time Lord gender, but I believe that is correct.” Said Kana, clearly confused as to why the Doctor was bringing up gender in such a tense moment. After three weeks of the Doctor retelling tales of her past travels and making what she hoped passed for small talk (she was never a fan, and they saw each other each day so there was hardly even much to catch up on) the Doctor had finally brought the conversation a bit closer to the present day, specifically three weeks ago when the Doctor was last on Gallifrey. 

“I could regenerate.”

“Yes?”

“No but really, I shouldn’t be telling you this you’ll tell someone else but I can regenerate. I could choose my form.”

“Forgive me,” If the Doctor turned around but to regenerate, is a Timelord not required to die?”  
“Ah, shouldn’t be too hard. Done it hundreds of times before. I could just smash my head into the ground really hard. Perform some sort of faulty backflip and land on my skull.” It didn’t seem like such a bad idea to the doctor. She could regenerate to look like Kana and would be teleported out to the cell at the end of her session. But that would leave her new friend stuck in a prison cell. She could regenerate into something completely different. A cloud of mist. The Doctor had never heard of anyone regenerating into a cloud of mist, but it couldn’t be impossible. She’d just float through the miniscule cracks in the walls of the cell and out of the prison through space until she got to her TARDIS and… and then what. She wouldn’t be able to die if she was a cloud of mist, so she couldn’t force regeneration again, she’d be stuck like that forever. 

Better stuck as a cloud roaming free than stuck as a person in a prison cell. 

“Doctor? Are you still with me?”

“Ah. Kana. Sorry. Lost in thought. What were we talking about?”

Kana thankfully didn’t bring up either of the past two topics of discussion, and instead asked questions about regeneration. The Doctor was happy to answer, which was surprising. She had barely said a word about it to her companions besides a few comments about changing gender, but humans can change gender as well. 

The first time that the doctor slept in the prison was a month after she arrived. She was worried to leave herself unguarded, but even Time Lords needed to sleep every once in a while, so the doctor lay down. She had her coat bunched up to make a sort of pillow under her, and while it wasn’t the most comfortable, that’s all that could be expected when sleeping on a metal floor. 

The Doctor was tired enough that she fell asleep minutes after she lay down. She really should have slept sooner, but had been putting it off for days now. 

When the Doctor woke up she was in different clothes, and the softness beneath her head was much too plush and not nearly lumpy enough to be her bundled up coat. 

The Doctor did what any person would do in that situation. Cry.

She was crying a lot more these days than she could ever remember crying before.

It wasn’t fair! 

She had nothing now!

Nothing!

No phone, no sonic, not even her TARDIS keys, and her boots had also been taken, her feet now only in socks. Only a red jumpsuit, a small pillow and… her rubik's cube?

The Doctor wiped the tears from her eyes, and reached out for the toy. It was scrambled. Had she left it scrambled?

When would they take this away from her too?

Kana came six hours later as scheduled. The Doctor hid her rubik’s cube, in case it was left behind by mistake. 

The Doctor had always been a weak telepath. He had failed more telepathy exams than he passed, after each one Professor Borusa had given him the same useless advice. “Practice meditating more.”   
The Doctor wasn’t one for meditation, in that body, this one, or any in between, but the Doctor was desperate for… hope? Knowledge of her surroundings beyond what could be seen out of her small cell window? Someone to talk to that wasn’t being paid to do so?

The Doctor shifted a bit, trying to get comfortable. She sat crossed legged as she had been instructed and tried to remember the next steps. 

Clear your mind.

Deep breaths in and out.

Connect to the Ma-. 

This was useless. It wouldn’t work. The Doctor’s connection to the Matrix had always been weak, they weren’t even able to sense other time lords half the time, and even if the Doctor could connect to the Matrix what good would it do her, this far from Gallifrey?

“Calm down. Just skip that step.” she muttered to herself. 

Reach out with your mind. Imagine it expanding until it reaches beyond your body. 

Deep breaths. In and out. 

She could feel the air between her and the walls, and the walls themselves, which were nearly a meter thick, and beyond them there were more rooms on either side. In front of her there was a door, and beyond that a hall. On the other side of the hall there was… an engine room? Something big and moving. The Doctor tried to focus on it.. Stretch her mind of whatever, but she must have stretched too far because the next second she was back to darkness.

Breath in, breath out. 

Try again.

It became part of her routine, and she hoped wherever Borusa was (dead. Borusa was dead, just like all the time lords, just like everyone on Gallifrey, dead and burned and not coming back this time.) he was proud of her for actually taking his advice, even if it was a few millennia after the fact. 

Her day started with Kana. 1 hour of therapy. Meditate until she couldn’t focus anymore. Eat when there were meals. Meditate some more. Fiddle around with the rubik's cube (now deconstructed and merely a collection of blocks. She gave them names and acted out little plays). Sleep, because she might as well. 

She had gotten better at telepathy, the practice paying off. She knew now that the room to her right had an occupant, but that the room to her left was empty. She knew for sure that they were on a ship, and that the ship was moving, and that the room across the hall did indeed hold an engine of sorts (interior solar stacks).

Even this part of her routine had a subroutine. There was an order that she would go over all these things before moving on and trying to see something new. 

Legs crossed on the floor.

Clear her mind.

Deep breaths in and out.   
Reach out with her mind, feel herself, the scattered rubik’s cube pieces. Right wall. Right neighboring room. Right neighbor, curled up in a ball in the far corner. Wall in front of her. Hallway. Engine room. Count the solar stacks. Left wall. Left neighbor- “Doctor Who?”

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open, her focus lost. A second later she felt a telepathic nudge, and tried to regain connection to her newly arrived left neighbor. It didn’t work at first, the Doctor’s brain trying to cycle through too many thoughts to come anywhere near a “clear mind”, but eventually she got her hearts (and brain) to stop racing, and reached out again.

“Doctor?”

This time she was ready for it, and didn’t get freaked out by the contact, but there was something else that shocked her. She knew this mind.

“Drax?”

Drax laughed through the telepathic connection. “Fancy that! Whole universe and you and I end up next to each other in a Judoon prison! What are the odds, yeah? Next thing you know, they’ll be bringing the Rani in to the cell above us! Mind you the Rani being in space jail would make more sense than you, why are you here?”

“I have no idea. They won’t tell me! And it’s been two months already and I still don’t know what I did to get arrested. I’m not even sure that it’s me that their arresting. I mean it is me but-”

“Future regeneration?” Drax guessed.

“More like past. Drax…?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever meet a regeneration of mine that was a dark skinned woman. Sort of heavy set but not really. Taller than I am now which isn’t saying much, mind you, I think that this is my shortest body yet.”

The Doctor could sense movement in the other room, and a second later Drax spoke. “I shook my head by the way. Don’t know if you could see that. I’ve never met a version of you that had dark skin, sorry.”

The Doctor hadn’t expected Drax to know her mystery regeneration, not even her TARDIS had been able to tell her anything about the other Doctor. 

She had tried to find out, obviously, right after meeting Ruth, and finding out that Ruth wasn’t Ruth, but rather her. Whatever had happened it wasn’t just her losing her memory, because the TARDIS couldn’t remember that incarnation either (or any other incarnations of the doctor besides the 14 that she remembered being. There must have been more. Thousands or millions even, though they wouldn’t have traveled in this TARDIS). She had searched the Library (before River was there. She couldn’t go after, the impulse to do something rash would have been too great), hacked into the Dalek’s database, riffled through books and records and journals and not found a single word of mention of the “Ruth Doctor”.

It made sense now that she hadn’t found anything. Her memories were distorted and erased by the timelords, it wouldn’t take any effort for them to hide her from history and from herself.   
“Huh. So how have you been?” Drax asked suddenly. 

The Doctor jolted. She had forgotten that she was in the middle of a conversation - and a telepathic one at that, Drax had probably heard all of her inner rambling, though if they did they didn’t mention it. 

“Pretty shit, considering I’m in jail.”

“Yeah, well, what can you do. I’ve had a shitty month too, if that makes you feel any better.”

“What are you here for?” the Doctor asked, “It better not be something horrid.”

“You hurt me Doctor. When have I ever done horrible things? In fact I’d go as far as to say that I’m one of the most moral timelords out there.”

“Not a lot of competition these days” the Doctor muttered out loud, though that made no difference to how clearly Drax heard her through the mind link. 

“I take it you’ve been to Gallifrey recently?” Drax asked hesitantly. 

The Doctor didn’t feel the need to respond. She was sure that her emotions were strong enough through the link to let her friend know the answer to their question. 

Drax quickly changed the subject, sensing that the Doctor didn’t want to talk about their planet. “So Doc, how are we getting out?”

“I- I haven’t figured that out yet. I don’t know if we can.”

“Come on. Two time lords against some Judoon? This will be easy.”

“I’m not even sure that I am a Timelord.”

“Timelady.”

“No, not that either. It’s not a gender thing it’s. Drax, I’m not who you think I am.”

“What I think you are is a person who is being too damn vague. What are you going on about, Doctor?”

“I found out that, well, everything that we know is a lie.”

“Like I said. Person who is too damn vague.”

“Shut up.” The Doctor took a deep breath, wondering whether Drax could feel her doing it, “The point is, I’m not from this universe. I came through a barrier billions of years ago - before Rassilon was even born probably. I could regenerate, something that no other person could do yet, and so my… adoptive mother, I guess, studied me, and made it so that Time Lords could exist. I’ve been alive all that time, in countless regenerations, but I can’t remember any of it.”

“Can you remember me? I mean, do you remember when we were at the Academy.”

“Yes. I remember being loomed, or, being in a loom I guess, since I wasn’t actually ever loomed, and I remember growing up in Cadon and going to the academy and my next 14 lives after that - give or take this one that I ran into who had my TARDIS - a blue box, you know how it looks, right? I met her and I don’t remember being her at all.”

“The dark skinned woman?”

“Yeah. I’ve been calling her Ruth Doctor.”

“That’s fun. I should give my regenerations fun little names. Much easier than calling them all Drax when we meet. I think that my first one will be… Arax. Then Brax, Crax, Drax, Erax, Frax. Keep it simple and easy to remember.”

“Stop messing about.”

“Doctor, you should know that I am physically incapable of that. Anyways, I think that you being the first person to be able to regenerate that we know of would make you extra-timelordy. You’re the OG timelord.”

“I’m some other thing that was used to make Timelords.” The Doctor corrected.

“Ok. How about this. Physically you are… Doctorspecies. But mentally you are a Timelord. In fact, based on the fact that you actually graduated from the academy and I didn’t one could argue that you are actually more of a Timelord than me.”

“Doctorspecies.”

“Right. So, as I was saying. A Timelord and a Doctorspecies, in a Judoon prison, how shall they escape.”

The Doctor’s eyes sprang open. She hadn’t even noticed that she had them closed. “Drax. Drax are you still wearing your clothes?”

“Yes? Why? Have you been imagining me naked?”

“I haven’t been imagining you at all. Have you got anything on you? Like in your pockets?”  
“Ah. You mean my normal clothes. Nah I woke up here in the cell in this funky red jumpsuit, they must have drugged me at some point. Very rude, these Judoon.”

The Doctor slumped over defeated, and let her body unroll until she was laying on the ground, staring up at the featureless grey ceiling. “Well, there goes what little plan I had.”

The doctor didn’t sleep that night like she had gotten into the routine of doing. She just lay there in her cell, or sometimes walked around, or sat up against the wall that she shared with drax separated by the meter of stone and metal and listened as she dropped stories into her mind. Drax told the doctor about his most recent run in with the monk (“It was on your planet, there. Earth.” “Earth isn’t my planet, Drax.” “Sure it is. You never used to shut up about it. Tell me, Doctor, what’s the first thing you’re planning to do when you get out of here?”.“Go golfing on Beta Antares.” Proclaimed the Doctor. Drax laughed though the telepathic link, it was a weird sort of sensation. “I can feel that you’re only saying that to prove me wrong”) and how he was remodeling an asteroid in Kasterborous to be a sort a base and every so often the Doctor would provide a tidbit of her own, some adventure that she had with the Fam, or Bill, or Clara.

“So. Are your other regenerations coming to bust you out?” The Doctor asked.

“No such luck. What happened last time we saw each other - I mean, I think that it would have been last time- isn’t a daily occurrence. That would get boring, always reliving your own life. We only run cons like that with all our regenerations around once a century. I’m all on my own here.”

“Why are you here?” The Doctor asked. They had been talking for the better part of two day, yet the Doctor still didn’t know what her friend had done to arrive in the prison. 

“Remember last time that we met - you handed four of my regenerations over to the cops? Well that cop was actually -”

“You?” The Doctor finished. “Romana and I figured it out right after we left you in her clutches.”

“Yeah. Well apparently impersonating law enforcement officers is a “crime” so here I am.”

“Is that true?”

“Yeah. Crazy, right?”

“No, I mean is that really why you are here or some lie to distract me.”

“Ugh. OK. I’m telling you because I trust you, and the only reason I tried to lie was because, no offence Doc, but you seem one question away from a mental breakdown.”

“Nothing you can say could make me have a mental breakdown.” said the Doctor, awfully confident for a woman who had spent the past 2 months doing little but having mental breakdowns. 

“Have you been to Gallifrey recently?” Drax asked again gently, seconds before their telepathic connection got suddenly cut off. 

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” Drax said, her voice gentle and calm in the Doctor’s brain a few seconds later “Sorry that I disappeared for a bit, your emotions were a bit strong for me, see, but I’ve got proper mental wards up, so it should be safe. Anyways, the real reason I got arrested was I was trying to bring Gallifrey back. Make it less crispy. De-cookify it.”

“Don’t joke about it” The doctor said out loud, her voice meek.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. It’s in my nature, jokes, but I am serious about this. I have this whole plan - and maybe getting arrested was a stroke of luck, ‘cause now you can help me out!”

The Doctor whipped around, facing the wall, and presumingly the timelord behind it. She could understand how her emotions could have overwhelmed Drax, they were just about overwhelming her too, filling her brain with lies about how everything that happened was her fault, and her job to fix, and that she wouldn’t be able to fix it no matter how hard she tried because she was weak and dumb and locked up in a stupid jail cell. Her words came out harsh and accusatory, “Why do you even want Gallifrey back? Figured that you’d be happier being left alone by the timelords!” she snapped.

“Listen I never liked Gallifrey! It’s a shit planet full of shit people, but have you considered that I care about some of those shit people? And I know that you do too! What about President Romana, don’t you want her back? And your brother and your children, what about them?”

“Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up and LEAVE ME ALONE”

Drax left her alone.

The room felt colder now, though she knew that it was the same 17 degrees that it always was. She didn’t know how to feel, she felt like she was running down a hill, throwing her legs in front of herself because the only other option was to trip and fall. Everything was happening too fast, but that couldn’t be true because nothing was happening at all. 

She continued on her routine like nothing had happened. She went to sleep, was woken up by the message announcing Kana’s arrival in 2.03 hours, ate her meals, talked to Kana, and meditated. 

She didn’t feel any better. She felt worse. Worse than she had before Drax arrived. Worse than when she first arrived, the wound of what had happened on Gallifrey still fresh and eating at her hearts.

“Drax?”

Drax didn’t say anything, but the Doctor could tell that she was listening.

“Drax, I’m really sorry. I know that I’m not the only one who’s hurting.”

“Thanks. So will you help me, then?”

“With what? I know that you have the best interest of Gallifrey at hearts, and you were right, there are people who were there that I cared about, but I’m afraid that this plan of yours might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

“That’s my whole thing, Doc, being more trouble than I’m worth.”

“How about this. We help each other get out of here, then we can talk about Gallifrey.”

“Sounds good Doctor.”

“So. Any escape ideas?”

“Minds a bit scattered right now. Ask me again later?”

“Will do.” Said the Doctor, and severed their connection.

“Mind control of our therapists?”

“It seems… mean.”

“Mean? They're the ones keeping us trapped here!”

“They’re not! They’re… helping.”

“Maybe yours is. Mine keeps on going on about my ‘inability to face the truth’ what does that even mean?”

“I’m not mind-controlling Kana. She’s my friend, kind of. The closest thing that I have to that here.”

“Wow. Thanks Doc.”

“Other than you. I doubt that I even could. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly an expert in telepathy here.”

“Ugh. Where’s the master when you need him?”

“Dead. The master’s dead.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. That’s how I want him.” the Doctor said, but she knew that it was a lie. “Let's say that hypothetically you did mind control your therapist, then what?”

“Ok. So he goes to the control room-”

“How do we know he has access?”

“Ok. The first day, we find out if he has access. The next day, if he does have access, we go to the control room. With jailbreaks I find the best thing to do is release everyone.”

“Planned a lot of jailbreaks, have you?”

“Well, that and I’ve seen films. If everyone is running about, I’m sure that the prison will have more important things to worry about than the two of us.”

“But we’ll be releasing hundreds of dangerous prisoners into the universe” the Doctor argued.

“Eh, it’s worth it.”

“Is it?”

“Definitely. Look, for your delicate morals or whatever, after we get out, and save Gallifrey, I will personally help you round up all the escapees.”  
The Doctor silently agreed to the plan.   
Turns out however that there was a problem. Drax was not at all confident in their mind controlling skills.

“I’ve just never done it much! It feels too much like cheating!”

“And helping your own past selves on a heist doesn’t?”

“Not at all. That’s some good self bonding, that is. I like to think my way out of sticky spots, not muscle out.”

“What makes this different? You’re trying to ‘muscle out’ here, you’re the one who even suggested it.”

“Well, it’s hard to reason with a stone wall, and I haven’t got any of my tools, do I.”

“Wouldn’t have helped. I had my coat and everything in it for a month and I didn’t find a way out.”

“Were you looking for one.”

“Of course I was looking for one!” the Doctor snapped. “Why would I want to be here!”

“I don’t know Doc, you’re a bit weird. And it’s not the worst place to be trapped - I can tell you I’ve been trapped in worse places. You know Ee-on-2?”  
At the same time that she got it everyday, a message arrived announcing that Kana would be there for the Doctor’s daily therapy session in 2.03 hours, interrupting Drax’s rant about interstellar noodles (and how most of them should be ashamed to call themselves that)  
2.03 hours later, Kana did not arrive. 

“You’re worried about something,” said Drax, interrupting their earlier tangent about how you couldn’t trust fruit. “Why are you suddenly worried?”

“It’s nothing. Probably. Hopefully. My therapist is late.”

“Might be a problem with the system.” Said Drax, but it didn’t stop the Doctor from worrying.   
It became apparent after some time that Kana wasn’t late, she just wasn’t coming. 

The Doctor cut off her connection with Drax, telling her that she needed to focus to try to find Kana. 

She focused, going through the steps. 

Legs crossed on the floor.

Clear her mind.

Deep breaths in and out. 

Reach out with her mind, feel herself, the scattered rubik’s cube pieces. Right wall. Right neighboring room. Right neighb- The room was empty. He must have gotten taken away. The doctor continued. Left wall. Left neighboring room. Drax, leaning against the back wall looking out her small window. Ceiling. Room above her. Person ab- no. That cell was empty as well, and so was the cell below her, and the cells adjacent to that one. 

She brought her mind back to drax’s room, who easily welcomed her back into her mind.

“Drax. We’re all alone.”

“Yep. All alone in space.”

“And that’s not freaking you out?”

“Why’s it freaking you out?”

“Well if we’re all alone where did everyone go? There were other prisoners before, in the rooms above and below us, but all those rooms are empty now.”

“Did they leave all at once?”

“I don’t know! I wasn’t paying attention! I was too busy talking to you.”

“Right. We need to get out.”

“Oh wow. Thanks Drax. If only I had thought of that. Only hitch in that plan is the fact that our current plan involved our therapists. Who apparently aren't here.”

“Hey, don’t get tetchy, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I’ll be as tetchy as I like! If I was being tetchy, that is. Which I’m not. Have you got any ideas?”  
Drax did the mental equivalent of a shrug. “They must have gone somewhere. Maybe they’re on a ship, close enough that we can reach telepathically.”

“Not close enough for me to reach, I can barely see the whole prison.”

“Listen, I’m gonna try sending out an emergency message. Hopefully if they are on a nearby ship there’s someone there that can pick us telepathic signals.”

Drax severed their connection before the Doctor could protest his plan, and a second later she felt his signal radiating outwards. 

Maybe she should scan the prison again, maybe she missed someone the first time. The doctor walked herself through the now familiar motions, blocking out Drax’s signal as best she could, expanding her mind farther and farther until-

“Drax.” The Doctor banged on their shared wall, not wanting to switch channels to talk to him. “Drax, Drax, we aren’t alone! There’s someone else! Three- no four- people.”

Drax didn’t answer. The doctor grimaced and repeated her thought - shoving it into her friend’s brain.  
The signal died immediately, and a moment later Drax was connected with her again. “I can feel them. They’re in the control room now. Should we try to contact them?”

“Well it’s that or wait here forever.” 

“Doc, they’re Daleks!”

“Here?”

“Yes here, where else would I be talking about? Also I think that they know that we’re here now, what with the whole telepathic message thing.”

“Fuck”

“We’re sitting ducks.”

“Nothing we can do. One of them is coming down here. Wish me luck?”

“With what? Best I can do is wish you an easy and painless regeneration.”

“Nah. Much too attached to this face, Doc.”

“What’s the plan then?”

“For you? Cut off the telepathic link. They might be able to sense it. I don’t know much about those tin cans but I’m not taking my chances. Me, I’m gonna stand on the wall next to the door so that they can’t shoot me straight away. Hopefully it’ll give me enough time to slip outside.”

“And then you get me out?”

“Well I’m not gonna abandon my prison buddy!”

“I’m holding you to that.”

With the link cut off the Doctor could only use her ears to figure out what was going on. Unfortunately, the walls were much too thick to give off much of anything - or anything at all. The Doctor took a similar position to the one that Drax describes, just in case they messed up and the Dalek came into her cell. 

For the first time since she arrived - or at least the first time that she had been conscious for - the heavy metal door of the Doctor’s cell slid open, revealing a grinning blonde.

“Alright there, Doctor?” Drax asked.

She couldn’t think of a time in this body that she had been happier. 

“Right. No time for reunion hugs, it’s only a matter of time before that Dalek makes its way out of the cell and it’s little trash can friends hunt us down. Any idea where they’re keeping out stuff? Not that it matters considering we might get killed but I was awfully attached to my old boots.”

“I could make a new sonic, but I like my coat. Problem is I don’t know where it is. Our best chance for survival is to get on a ship and get out of here.”

“Unless the Dalek’s came on a warship. Then that will get us just as killed.”

“I’m a wonderful pilot, Drax. I think that I can outrun a few Daleks.”

“Whatever you say, Boss.”

“Oh. Am I the boss now?”

“The Bosster. Where did the Daleks first show up? That’ll be where their ship is.”

“I first sensed them near the top of the prison. Floor 1 if you will, but we can’t be sure that they even came in a ship.”

Elevators would be risky, but climbing to the top of the space station with the emergency ladders would take longer, and was just as risky if a Dalek managed to shoot down at them from an upper floor. It took a little jiggling from Drax to get the doors to open, but soon the two Time Lords were on their way up to the top floor. 

“Only one Dalek is still up there,” Drax informed the Doctor as they neared the top. “Rest are down below us. Should be easy enough for us to take out.”

The Dalek saw them the moment that the elevator doors opened into the docking space. 

“ALERT. ALERT. IDENTIFY.”

“Come on!” Drax leapt into the air, and ran along at 1 meter above the ground as the Doctor sprinted to the other side of the room, making a wide sweep around the Dalek who was desperately trying to shoot Drax, who was hovering just above his head. How had the Doctor never thought of that? Well, it didn't really matter, it wouldn’t do anything to actually stop the Dalek from hurting other people, and the Doctor had just about as much control over her flying as a drowning bug had over it’s swimming. 

Weapons. The Doctor needed a weapon. She looked around desperately and ended up grabbing the   
only unattached thing she could find, a thick fuel pipe for the ships. She tested the spray, and ran forwards until she was within shooting range of the Dalek, who span around to face her and immediately got it’s eyestalk covered in thick grey fuel. She dropped her weapon and ran back towards the Dalek Ship, Drax following her through the air.

Behind them the Dalek screamed in pain, it’s attempts to evaporate the liquid causing their eyestalk to melt as the Doctor and Drax boarded the ship and shut the door behind them.

“Have you ever flown one of these, Doctor?” Drax asked as the Doctor fiddled with the controls, quickly figuring out the take off procedure.

“Sure, must have at some point. Probably stole one during the time war. Hang tight though, it’s not built to be flown by a humanoid.”

The sauser’s screens flashed with Dalek writing and footage of the space outside the ship. There was indeed another Dalek ship waiting for them.

“We won’t be able to outrun them.” The Doctor said. “That ship’s ten times the size of ours and I’ll bet it goes twice as fast.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve sabotaged enough Dalek ships, I think that I can make one better. You just keep them out of shooting range and I’ll be happy.” Drax ran off to the engines, leaving the Doctor alone to decide what the smartest move was. Going away from the ship would give them a head start, but would look suspicious. Going towards them would mean that it would take longer to get out of shooting range, and the Dalek’s would realise that something was up the moment that they passed the ship. Well, away it was. The Doctor turned their shuttle away from the larger ship, and almost immediately the Dalek ship started gaining on them and then there was little that the Doctor could do to get them away from the tractor beam that was pulling them in closer and closer to the Dalek ship. 

“Drax!” The Doctor yelled, “Now would be a great time for some engineering marvel!”

But time wasn’t something that they had. One moment the Doctor stood at the controls of the stolen shuttle and the next she was in the middle of a crowd of people in a much larger space.”

“Doctor!” Drax pushed past a large Moldorian, who looked like he would happily crush the timelord’s skull and grabbed onto the Doctor’s forearms.

The Doctor ignored her friend and tried to get a hold of her bearing. She could see now that she was on the Dalek ship, pulled in through some sort of emergency teleport. Surrounding her were almost 100 people, most wearing prison uniforms like the one the Doctor and Drax had on, and the rest presumably workers form the prison. The Doctor tried to find Kana, but couldn’t see her from where she was, cursing her short legs. 

“Why aren’t we dead?” the Doctor whispered to Drax.

“How would I know, I just got here?”

“I think that they want us for something”, the Moldorian said, his voice low and soft. “A few dozen of the galaxy’s most dangerous criminals, that’s worth something.”

Next to her Drax closed their eyes, trying to see what they could see telepathically. “There are less than them and there are of us, but they have weapons, and we don’t, besides the few guards with stun guns and the like, which won’t do much against a Dalek, mind you, if I got my hands on a few of them I could make something useful-”

“The Dalek’s would notice.”

Their plotting was interpreted by the jarring voice of a Dalek commanding the prisoners and prison workers (though weren’t they all prisoners now?) to form a queue so that they could be interrogated as to their usefulness to the Dalek empire. The Doctor and Drax tried to get themselves a spot neer the back but were pushed forwards as most everyone was also trying to be as far away from the Dalek’s as possible, and ended up just where the orderly queue turned into a lawless hoard. 

After four people had been exterminated, and another six sent away after being deemed useful, the Doctor and Drax were standing in front of the Dalek.

“Species: Time Lord. You are sworn enemies of the Dalek race. You-”

“Will be exterminated, blah blah blah.” Drax finished for it.

“We’re not just any time lords. We’re the Doctor! And your superiors won’t be happy if you kill us!”

“Scan confirms. You are the Doctor. Fallow.” the herd behind them breathed a sigh of relief as the Dalek led Drax and the Doctor out of the atrium and down a corridor.

“We?” Drax hissed in the Doctor’s ear, as they stepped into the main bridge.

“Oi, that we might have saved your life. I doubt that you on your own are important enough to be spared.”

“Oi, yourself.” said Drax, but didn’t argue any further. At least not out loud. 

“You have a plan beyond this point?” Drax asked in her mind.

“Doctors. Surrender yourselves as prisoners to the Dalek Empire.”

“Yeah. No.” Said the Doctor, scrunching up her nose, “I’ve done the whole prisoner thing. Not a fan.”

“Surrender or be exterminated.”

“Oh see, that’s not terribly smart. My regenerations are known to be quite.. Violent, Isn’t that right, me?”

“Quite right. Blew up a whole building once.” Said Drax.

The Doctor smiled, happy that they were on the same page. “We could do a lot worse to this ship if one of your little lazers hits us.”

“You would not do this.” The Dalek captain insisted. “Studies of past show that the Doctor would not destroy ship with so many other lifeforms on it.”

“Says who? I’ve blown up plenty of your ships. A whole fleet one time.”

“I even blew up my own planet, right at the end of the time war.” Added Drax, and the Doctor attempted not to wince, though that wasn’t the whole truth; it didn’t change that originally her plan had been to destroy Gallifrey. 

“And the question isn’t whether we would blow up this ship”

“It’s whether or not you will choose to blow up yourselves, or give in to our demands.”

“The Daleks do not negotiate.”

“You can start a new trend.” Said the Doctor, “Now. We want safe passage for us and all the other non-daleks on this ship back to a civilized planet.”

“If you try to teleport us back, it’s all the same. If you try to teleport anyone else back but let us go, let us remind you that we are in the possession of a quite wonderful time travel machine.” 

“This is impossible.”

“Time travel? You’ve got to-”

“This ship is not equipped with enough vessels to transport all the prisoners, however using the short range teleport we can teleport you back to the prison.”

The Doctor chewed on her lip, thinking. “Deal.”

The Doctor and Drax were escorted to the room that they had arrived in and saw that many more people had been exterminated while they were talking to the Dalek captain. 

“Teleporting 64 lifeforms to largest room in prison” A Dalek spoke, it’s plunger attached to a computer. “Standby.”

Chaos broke loose the moment they landed. The remaining prisoners rushed the guards and grabbed their weapons, holding them against their heads, a few of them rushed to the sides of the room - the engines - and searched for doors. 

“This way-” said Drax, grabbing the doctor’s elbow and pulling her away from the mob.

“Hold up. I want to see if I can get a guard to tell us where they’re holding my stuff.”  
“Don’t bother. Everyone’s down here right now, if the two of us can get to the main control room before anyone else, the whole place is under our thumbs. You can get your sonic back and we can configure the teleports here to get us wherever we want to go.”

The benefit of being a telepath was that the Doctor and Drax already had a run of the place, and were able to find the control room before anyone else, who were all busy wandering around non-descript hallways of locked cells. 

Luckily the door to the control room was unlocked, and the controls themselves easy to decipher. 

“This will take me a bit,” Said Drax, already messing about with one of the stations. “Confiscated clothing and personal items are held on the floor below us in nice ordered boxes. Get my stuff too, or I’m leaving you.”

The boxes were nice and ordered, and also written in Judoonese, which the Doctor didn’t have to hard of a time deciphering. She found Drax’s first and grabbed their clothes, and went off to find her own locker. The Doctor climbed the ladder back up to the control room with one hand, the other holding tight to all the things that were too big to fit into her pockets. It was nice to have her coat back, though a bit warm on top of the other layers. 

“Thanks,” Drax said, grabbing their stuff before the Doctor was even out of the hatch. “We’re all ready to go.”

One moment the Doctor was standing in a Judoon prison, and the next she was back in her TARDIS. She swayed a bit and Drax caught her, throwing the bundle in their arms to the ground, and pulling her in for a proper hug. 

The Doctor didn’t feel like she had the strength to pull away, and she really didn’t want to. She’d been shying away from hugs this regeneration, and it was going much better than it had the last one. Only one person had tried to hug her in this body. 

She dropped her head into the crook of Drax’s shoulder, eyes screwed up tight as tear drops began to form.

Drax started to pull away, but then stopped, and kept on holding her. 

“Hey.” They whispered after a bit. “Best thing might be to move your TARDIS. If the Judoon get back on their feet this would be the first place that they look for you.”

The Doctor nodded and pulled away. She walked slowly to the consul,Drax trailing behind her. The TARDIS controls were cool beneath her touch, like they had been laying dead all the time that the Doctor was away. “Can I drop you off anywhere?”

“Uh-uh. Not just yet. We had a deal, Doctor Who, you and I are going to bring back Gallifrey.”

**Author's Note:**

> hey if you are reading this i would die for u. also uhh if you are a doccy who writer come join our fanfic writing server! It's great fun. message @13thparadox on tumblr for the link.


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